Jason F.C. Clarke

Blog

  • Action!

    My life, as of late, has consisted primarily of working, playing videogames, and…well, reading on occasion, though I just had to give up the book I was reading because the writing wasn’t very good. It was the second time I’d tried this writer. The first time it was one of his early novels, so I thought I’d give him another shot, but no joy; again, the awkward, stilted writing confounded me. I won’t name the author in the incredibly unlikely event that I ever make it in the industry, but I doubt I’ll be trying him again anytime soon.

    I did recently read a novel that I enjoyed immensely: Armor by John Steakley. It’s loosely based on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, with the same set-up (humanity is in an intergalactic war with a race of spacefaring giant insects, and the plot battles are fought with soldiers wearing powered armor).
    (more…)

  • Top Ten Cartoons of All Time…EVER.

    Since my Saturday morning cartoons post proved so popular, I decided to go ahead and compile a list of my top ten cartoons of all time. This list is unrestrained by timeslot or, I should mention, relative quality. I make no claim as to this list representing what I think are the best cartoons ever made. That list would be quite different. Today’s list is about the cartoons that have made a significant impact on me or my life at some point.

    Anyone who knows me at all no doubt can guess #1 right now, but we’re going to start at number ten.
    (more…)

  • The Vending Machines are Coming

    I work at a small art college. Recently, the college installed what has to be the most complicated vending machine ever made.

    Vending machines used to be simple: you pays your money and you gets your chocolate bar. Nowadays you usually just push a button, though there was a time you had to pull a lever or turn a crank or do something that actually requires a little bit of manual labor, much like those poor saps who don’t have power windows in their car.

    But no vending machine in compares to the terrifying device now squatting in the student lounge.
    (more…)

  • Gaming’s Greatest Guns

    I’ve got to agree with most of the choices in this article, “Gaming’s Greatest Guns”. I’ve played most of those games and the choices are dead-on, especially DOOM II‘s double-barreled shotgun, Duke Nukem 3D‘s shrink-ray, Halo‘s pistol and Perfect Dark‘s laptop gun. (Though, from what I understand, the omission of Half-Life 2‘s Gravity Gun is fairly egregious.)

    Some of the commenters on the article suggest the Lancer from Gears of Wars should be included as well. Personally I disagree—there’s nothing particularly innovative or interesting about the weapon, except that it’s a machine gun with a chainsaw on it. We’ve had chainsaws and we’ve had machine guns in FPS games before. The Torque Bow is a bit more interesting, but I don’t really see how it’s significantly different from a missile launcher (except that it takes longer to fire, can’t heat-seek, and has a delay before it explodes).

    Ultimately, I don’t think any of Gears of Wars‘s weapons were particularly ground-breaking in any way (or even overpowered), so I wouldn’t have included them on the list.

    On a related note, it looks like the much-loved original Halo pistol is back for Halo 3—in looks, at least (the video is a leak and will probably be taken down by the time you click).

  • Synchronized bartending?

    How would you play Root Beer Tapper co-op? It’s almost worth buying it on Xbox Live Arcade just to find out.

    Almost.

    Speaking of XBLA, I seem to be the only member of my XBL friends group who actually makes use of it. Personally, I’m having a blast playing Doom and Geometry Wars Evolved, and am looking forward to the upcoming Worms. I may write a longer entry on this topic later.

  • Two years and counting

    Since the Saturday morning cartoon post proved so popular, I’ll soon put up a Top Ten Cartoons of All Time post. I’m just trying to decide whether to do it in one big post or as ten separate posts.

    Today marks the two-year anniversary of the current incarnation of Biggerboat. Two years ago I wrote my first post, “paramental”, discussing a short story that I never actually finished (surprise surprise). Things were different back then. The Sox were World Series champions. The Patriots were about to win the Super Bowl the very next day. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated.
    (more…)

  • A cool $20

    Thanks to the Amazon association on my Snow Miser site, I actually made twenty bucks over the holiday season.

    I also have about twenty-five dollars stored up on Google Adsense, but I only get that money after it hits $100. Just three more years!

  • Top Five Saturday Morning Cartoons

    I’ve often declared my life’s goal to make every day feel like Saturday morning. If there’s anything that makes me regret the linear direction of space-time and ache for the past as all mortals do, it’s that I can never truly recapture what it feels like to be a young kid on a Saturday morning.

    Growing up in the 1980s following the FCC’s deregulation of children’s programming, Saturday morning offered a bevy of options for the child who, having woken at six a.m. to enjoy as much of his school-free day as possible, would down three bowls of sugar-loaded cereal while watching colorful talking animals and consequence-free cartoon violence. True, many of the shows were little more than half-hour advertisements for toys (or candy, or Mr. T). Others were genuinely entertaining. But what Saturday morning cartoons really offered children was a time when television catered just to them. No boring adult dramas or shows they weren’t allowed to watch. Saturday morning TV belonged to kids.
    (more…)

  • Must be nice

    Bill Simmons spends the whole of his most recent column praising Miami and the NFL’s return to sunny, fun destinations for the players (and sports writers) of Super Bowl week. I think he’s officially lost whatever remaining shreds of street cred might have been lingering on his person. He’s still a great read as always, though.

  • Jason Clarke, NFL superstar

    So along with Gears of War, I also got Madden 2007 for Christmas. I’ve come to appreciate football—or any sport in general—only recently, and it’s arguable that my fondness for football stemmed largely from hopping on the Patriots bandwagon over the last seven years (hey, at least I’m a native New Englander).

    But I’ve found a lot of things to like about football. The pace isn’t as slow as baseball or as frenetic as basketball, but instead, it has a kind of dramatic feel as two teams of modern-day gladiators smash into each other, trying to drive a wedge through the enemy or turn them back. Football is great on television, whereas TV reduces baseball to little more than the pitcher/batter duel. There’s room to appreciate all the players in football. The quarterback is important, but he’s more like the lead singer of an ensemble band (like Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam) than, say, Daughtry.
    (more…)